The Great British Sewing Bee!

 

 

I brought my Ipad to work the other day and started watching The Great British Sewing Bee on my lunch break in the staff room (I do have friends I swear). I managed to convert a few non sewers into watching it and I'm sure that by the end of my break, they were as gripped to see whose prom dress was going to turn out the best as I was. (Okay I say gripped, they may have said interested)

 

I love this series! Apart from the actual sewing, I love the friendliness of all the contestants involved. It's not very often that contestants in a TV show have no arguments, help each other and actually seem to want each other to do well. Even the lovely judges are never horrible to anyone!

 

I think my favourite contestant this year is Chinelo. I just love the way she makes clothes, using no patterns, but still makes everything fit perfectly. I really want one of her velvet wrap dresses she made the other week. I recently found out that she has a blog where she shows us how to make similar garments to the ones she makes on the show. She also gives away some of her secrets for free hand cutting and making your own patterns! I really want to try the wrap jersey tutorial; I may have about 10 wrap over skirts already but ah well.

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w7wln/profiles/chinelo

 

I do love Heather though too. There is a soft spot for her and her pin dog in my heart, haha. I can't wait to see who wins, but my money is on Chinelo, Tamara and Lynda in the final. 

Back to clothes!

I have been working on a few projects recently that are a bit of a change from all the accessories and homey things I have making over Christmas. I love the fact that you get to see results so fast with smaller projects, (I can be a very impatient sewer) but its good to have a change and mix it up a bit. 

So I'm back onto garments for a while, including a dressing gown/robe for my Mom. She has been obsessing over a kimono style robe with massive sleeves that she saw Skyla wearing in breaking bad. Kind of like this I guess.

No luck finding one of those anywhere so she asked me to make her one. The pattern we found is a Vogue one and also comes with patterns for slips pants and camisoles, which I can't wait to try!

I made the robe slightly larger than the pattern as I knew Mom wanted to have more fabric to wrap around. I also added about 25cm to each sleeve width, to get the more drapey, kimono effect. Obviously this proved a bit of a challenge when attaching the sleeves to the arm hole! I ended up gathering most of the upper part of the sleeve and adding a little pleat at the top of the shoulder. That seemed to sort it out.

 

The fabric is a lovely, drapey, satiny floral type. Love the grey! The pattern itself came together quite well! I used french seams on most of the seams, something I never normally do (I prob should make a bit more effort on the insides now, french seams look so neat! I think I'm converted) One really tricky part of this garment was where the collar joined the rest of the front of the robe (I guess it would be the lapel?) I don't think the instructions were that clear and I had a few strops with it. They aren't perfect, which is annoying, but it's covered when you wrap it over to fasten it, so I suppose it doesn't matter so much.

 

All in all I'm pretty pleased. My mom likes it anyway, so that's the main thing. I'm now working on a little skirt to match a jacket I have just finished, so more on that later!